South Africa’s strange COVID-19 case numbers

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I can not express how I feel after reading this article. In all discussions with my family and friends I keep trying to explain that there’s just isn’t enough testing being done. There is a major difference between screening and testing, I strongly believe screening may not be an effective method and only testing to be assured of the true situation since not everyone shows symptoms of the virus. Thank you My BroadBand for this article. I humbly request if there can be an article on explaining the difference between mass screening and testing as I see many media outlets are getting that wrong with reports saying mass testing undertaken. We just don’t have sufficient test kits.

Honorary Master

I can not express how I feel after reading this article. In all discussions with my family and friends I keep trying to explain that there’s just isn’t enough testing being done. There is a major difference between screening and testing, I strongly believe screening may not be an effective method and only testing to be assured of the true situation since not everyone shows symptoms of the virus. Thank you My BroadBand for this article. I humbly request if there can be an article on explaining the difference between mass screening and testing as I see many media outlets are getting that wrong with reports saying mass testing undertaken. We just don’t have sufficient test kits.

First of all, much more needs to be done to provide the vital statistics that allow us to be informed about our response. Paradoxically, while there is a lot of noise and media briefings, there is not that much hard information; what comes out on the sacoronavirus website is an increasing bald, minimal and not independently verified set of health statistics.

It’s not enough.

We have a right to know the specifics about the plan to scale up Covid-19 testing and not a stream of platitudes and promises by the CEO of the NHLS. Why exactly is the scale-up of testing taking so long? Has the government acquired the test kits needed? How many? Why are we not yet using the academic pathology laboratories for testing?

South Africa needs to test 12 times more people per day for the new coronavirus than it currently does. Our testing plan can only do this if we use a wider range of tests - including controversial ones.

Expert Member

Member

1749 positive out of 58098 tests conducted... SA population is roughly 57 million people. So we have tested 0.1% of the population.

I am not too convinced that the actual number of infections are correct.

My humble opinion: Considering that we have limited test kits available and that we are on the rising part of the curve one would assume that tests were only done on patients whose symptoms warrants the use of this limited resource. That being said it would be fair then to question the skill level of the medical workers if roughly only 3% of tests shows positive on "symptomatically positive" candidates. Are we wasting tests and time on asymptomatic candidates? Who is checking the effectiveness of the process ?In other countries it appears that as the volume of tests increase so does the number of positives. This is the desired outcome as if you identify positives early you can isolate and prevent further infections, but only if you identify the correct symptomatic candidates for testing. By concentrating on "hotspots" rather than random testing the curve can be flattened. One can only hope that when the dung hits the fan we will have enough testing equipment to handle the numbers. Big Nations are not playing nicely when it comes to sharing scarce resources so we need to make it count.

Expert Member

People will always find room to criticize. Give everyone R300 000 with no strings attached and someone will criticize. Sad.

Putting politics aside, the South African government has done well with the coronavirus saga; the numbers would have been MUCH higher if there was delay in implementing current measures. I also thought the numbers would have passed the 3K mark, assuming the virus would make its way to the townships and rural areas and spread like wildfire.

They should have overlay the 2 graphs--in this way we can see the ratio of TESTS to CASES...this is a much better metric of epidemic control. Mass testing, isolate positives and enforce physical distancing (mingling of infected (known and unknown) with susceptables.

Senior Member

So if they test everyone, then what? You know a few more infections but not those that are incubated but not yet showing symptoms. What are we going to do, keep testing the whole population every few days and remove those that are sick?

I have absolutely no idea how any of this is supposed to play out. Perhaps management has a better idea, but I feel everyone is just stalling till they think of another step...

Senior Member

There is stage 4 cancer in someone who has a month to live and there is stage 4 cancer with 3-4 years or perhaps more to live. One distant met = stage 4. If that's removed and disease amenable to chemo it is possible to survive long perhaps achieve remission.

Senior Member

So if they test everyone, then what? You know a few more infections but not those that are incubated but not yet showing symptoms. What are we going to do, keep testing the whole population every few days and remove those that are sick?

I have absolutely no idea how any of this is supposed to play out. Perhaps management has a better idea, but I feel everyone is just stalling till they think of another step...

We're testing good numbers. People are upset because they want the lockdown to end to restart their business activities. More tests won't harm as long as we have capacity and enough PPEs. We suck at capacity.